[Marxism] Hiding US Crimes - Mogadishu Empty and in Ruins

[Dbachmozart@xxxxxxx]

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A Black Agenda Radio  commentary by Glen Ford

"Human Rights  Watch says âthe world would be shocked' at the devastation and 
the plight of  Somalia's people."  
Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, has ceased to exist as a city. Inhabited  
by nearly three million people less than two years ago, and still home to more 
 than a million nine months ago, Mogadishu has been virtually emptied of  
civilians. Whole sections have been leveled, according to the BBC, in what 
Human  
Rights Watch calls "the most ignored tragedy in the world" today. Ignored, th
at  is, by the American and most of the world's media.  
A lone reporter for the BBC described neighborhoods as having been  
"systematically leveled" in desperate battles between resistance fighters and  
Ethiopian occupation soldiers and their allies. Human Rights Watch says "the  
world 
would be shocked" at the devastation and the plight of Somalia's people,  
millions of whom are now refugees stalked, bombed and besieged in the  desolate 
southern Somali countryside. A year ago, United Nations officials  declared 
that 
Somalia was the "_worst  humanitarian crisis_ 
(http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2007/11/2008525142715450338.html)  in 
Africa" - more dire than Darfur 
- and in May Amnesty  International released a report charging Somali 
civilians were _routinely  targeted_ 
(http://www.amnesty.org.uk/uploads/documents/doc_18413.pdf)  for attack, mainly 
by the Ethiopian occupiers and soldiers of the 
 rump Somali government imposed by the Ethiopians.  
Why have the world media all but ignored the destruction of a capital city  
and the death and dispersal of its people? Racism is, of course, the paramount  
reason. Europeans and Americans absolve themselves of guilt for their 
centuries  of rapacious exploitation of the African continent, by turning the 
historical  crime upside down. Africans, they say, are savages who cannot help 
but 
kill each  other; therefore, that's not news. But the carnage in Somalia that 
has emptied  Mogadishu is a direct consequence of _American  policy_ 
(http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=620&Itemid=1)
 
: Washington's so-called War on Terror, which is really an endless war  
against peace.  
In December of 2006, the U.S. encouraged its ally, the Ethiopian dictatorship 
 to stamp out peace in neighboring Somalia, where Muslim Courts had 
established  relative stability for the first time since Somalia fell into 
chaos 1991. 
The  U.S. lavished weapons on the Ethiopian army, placing American "advisors" 
down to  the company level. When the U.S. gave the word, the _Ethiopians  
attacked_ 
(http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=449&Itemid=1)
 , backed by American air and naval power. Washington claimed 
the  Somalis had been infiltrated by Al Qaida and, with Ethiopia, installed a 
Somali  government to their own liking. It is a puny regime that could not 
last a week  without Ethiopian and U.S. support, and which has presided over 
the 
demise of  Somalia's great and once beautiful city, Mogadishu.  
The world media ignore the leveling of Mogadishu because it is an American  
crime, and Washington prefers the victim die in silence. Certainly, the U.S.  
State Department, which leads the corporate press corps around by the nose, is  
not encouraging anyone to visit what's left of Mogadishu - although they are  
eager to facilitate visits to Darfur.  
Black America's celebrated "son of Africa," Barack Obama, has had nothing to  
say about the nightmare that the Bush regime has inflicted on Somalia, and 
which  he will inherit if elected in November. Or, maybe his silence speaks for 
itself.  
For Black Agenda Radio, I'm Glen Ford.  
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be  contacted at 
_Glen.Ford@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (mailto:Glen.Ford@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx)   
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